Business aid scheme to go country-wide

The Make the Grade programme was set up in four secondary schools and their feeder primaries in the autumn term last year.

Hundreds of volunteers from successful Leeds-based businesses have given their time to help pupils’ education and it has proved so successful that it is now in demand outside the city.

Top professionals such as lawyers, business executives and bankers’ work in schools has included mentoring pupils to help them to hit their targets, work placements and competitions aimed at getting young people to develop entrepreneurial skills.

The project has been led by the not-for-profit Leeds Ahead organisation which was set up by former lawyer Stephanie Burras to bring businesses together to tackle social problems in the city.

Now she is planning to take the approach to other areas of the country. Make the Grade will be expanded in Leeds and launched in another city in the North of England in September. There are also plans to take it even further afield.

Ms Burras said: “I have been approached by a government in Eastern Europe and I am also interested in how the model could work in emerging economies such as India where the need will be greater.”

The expansion of the scheme in Leeds will see seven more schools getting involved in Make the Grade including Carr Manor, Crawshaw School in Pudsey and Ralph Thoresby.

Leeds Ahead is also being expanded outside of the city. Ms Burras said she wanted to set up new “Ahead” organisations in other cities and believes the business turnover will increase tenfold to around £10m over the next five years.

Although Make the Grade started with only four Leeds secondaries – Swallow Hill, John Smeaton, Cockburn and the new Co-Operative academy in Leeds – it has already had an impact on more than 2,000 pupils across these schools and their 23 partner primary schools.

The scheme is aimed at any schools which fails to get half of their pupils to reach five A* to C grades in their GCSEs and Leeds Ahead is tracking the results of those involved to ensure the work they are doing is having an impact.

Ms Burras said her team was looking at schools’ GCSE pass rates, success in English Baccalaureate subjects – such as maths, English, modern languages, sciences, history and geography – and also the level of progress being made by students.

“The project is not data driven but we want to look at the data to make sure that the creative approaches we are taking are the right ones,” she said.

Businesses involved in Leeds include Asda, electronics distributor Premier Farnell and law firms Pinsent Mason and Eversheds.

However Ms Burras said the approach could work in any city where businesses have the will to get involved and schools are keen to work in partnerships.

One of the major benefits to schools is that the majority of funding for the programmes is provided by the private sector. It also allows teachers to work with the business volunteers to ensure the work they do meets the need of each individual school.

Ms Burras said that teachers, pupils and business volunteers had been very enthusiastic about the scheme since its launch in September last year.

David Gurney, the head of Cockburn High, said: “Together we tailored a programme of activities that were appropriate to the challenges of this school. We have been particularly successful in removing barriers to pupils’ learning and we view our relationship as representing excellent value for the limited funds we have available.”

Ms Burras is keen to stress that the aim of the scheme is not just to raise educational attainment but also to deliver benefits to the businesses involved.

She said that the project gives its volunteers the chance to stretch themselves and work outside of their comfort zone and also gives the businesses the chance to work with talented young people whom they might want to recruit once they leave school.

Ms Burras said she expected the Make the Grade project to be rolled out across the Leeds City Region.

“We have all the ingredients here. We have the young people who want to be successful, we have businesses who want to get involved and have the capability and fantastic people to send into schools and we have schools which know that they have to improve and which want to improve.”

Ms Burras said she would welcome Government funding to help the scheme to expand but said that it needed to be run as an independent partnership between schools and businesses for it to be a success. “It is about delivering concrete activity that works in the classroom. It is also very important to think about the needs of the business as well as the needs of the school.”